Yalom has described certain "givens" or "terrors" or "ultimate concerns" of life. First, it is essential to understand (and at least temporarily agree with) Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. In a nutshell, there is a progression of needs that we inherently follow. The first concern of our existence is our physical and biological survival, hence, food, water, and shelter. The next tier is a matter of social safety and security; such as employment, family, and property. Following that is the development of the relationships that spawn in the second tier: friendships, love, family, and other interpersonal relationships. Nearing the tops is our need for self confidence and fulfillment such as respecting others, being respected by others, and self-esteem. The top tier is headed by things such as morality, creativity, and prejudice. The essential point here is that if an unemployed, single, homeless man is worried where or when his next meal will come or where he will sleep that night, it is highly doubtful that he will (at the same time) be contemplating the inner workings of Being and Nothingness or The Sickness Unto Death.
With that in perspective, assuming you're not starving to death and are not reading this blog while you should be working or spending time with your family... we are ready to move on.
I recently read and took notes on Irvin D. Yalom's latest book Staring at the Sun. I took several pages of notes on the book, but will only post a few a few selections below in italic font and my comments will be in "regular text." The next post in this series will be Existential Psychology 201 and will contain my corresponding answers to the question's posed by the "reader's guide" at the end of Staring at the Sun.
...certain life situations almost always evoke death anxiety: for example, a serious illness, the death of someone close, or a major irreversible threat to one's basic security - such as being raped, divorced, fired, or mugged. Reflection on such an event will generally result in the emergence of overt death fears (22).
However helpful ideas may be, they are vitally empowered by intimate connections with other people (28)
to philosophize is to prepare for death (Cicero) (Yalom, 32)
it is only in the face of death that a man's self is born (St. Augustine) (Yalom, 32)
physicality of death destroys us, the idea of death saves us (33)
(Heidegger) proposed two modes of existence: the everyday mode and the ontological mode (from "onto", being, and the suffix "-logy", study of). In your everyday mode, you are absorbed in... HOW things are; whereas in the ontological mode, you focus and appreciate the miracle... THAT things are (33)
a confrontation with death arouses anxiety but also has the potential of a vastly enriching life (75)
grief and loss may awaken one and make one mindful of one's being (37) I believe I once wrote a very passionate and livid essay on the same subject. I was very honored to have the essay compared (by my academic adviser Eric Berg) to "Being and Nothingness"
i was going quietly to my end... certain that the last burst of my heart would be inscribed on the last page of my work and that death would be taking only a dead man (Sartre) (Yalom, 50)
difficult decisions often have roots that reach into the bedrock of existential concerns and personal responsibility (58)
Heidegger once defined death as "the impossibility of further possibility" (59)
i am in the screened porch of a flimsy summer cottage and see a large, menacing beast with an enormous mouth waiting a few feet from the front door. I am terrified. i worry something will happen to my daughter. I decide to try to satisfy the beast with a sacrifice and toss a red plaid stuffed animal out the door. The beast devours the bait but stays there. Its eyes burn. They are fixated on me. I am the prey (67)
Epicurus believed that the proper mission of philosophy is to relieve human misery. and the root cause of human misery? Epicurus had no doubt the answer... our omnipresent fear of death (77)
the effect we have on other people is in turn passed on to others, much as the ripples in a pond go on and on until they're no longer visible but continuing at a micro level (83)
attempts to preserve personal identity are always futile. rippling, as I use it, refers instead to leaving behind something from your life experience; some trait; some piece of wisdom, guidance, virtue, comfort that passes on to others, known or unknown (83-84)
the poet lamented that all beauty is destined to fade into nothingness and that all he loved was shorn of its value by its ultimate disappearance (the academic replies) On the contrary! Limitation in the possibility of an enjoyment raises the value of the enjoyment (Freud) (Yalom, 90)
a time may indeed come when the pictures and statues which we admire today will crumble to dust, or a race of men may follow us who no longer understand the works of our poets and thinkers, or a geological epoch may even arrive when all animate life upon earth ceases; but since the value of all this beauty and perfection is determined only by its significance for our own emotional lives, it has no need to survive us and is therefore independent of absolute duration (Freud) (Yalom, 91)
when we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago (Nietzsche) (Yalom, 97)
what if you were to live in the identical life again and again throughout eternity - how would that change you? what if someday or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "this life as you no live it and have lived it, you will have to live it once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!" Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "you are a god and never have I heard anything more divine." If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you (Nietzsche) (Yalom, 99) This is a tantalizing thought. What would your answer be?
no positive change can occur in your life as long as you cling to the thought that the reason for your not living well lies outside yourself (100) Everyone has struggles they must get through, we must find a way. Why? What other reason would there be for you not having given up yet and still contemplating the issue.
love your fate... create the fate that you can love (Nietzsche) (Yalom, 100)
the hypothetical army of monkey typists who by random chance over the course of a billion years produce Shakespeare's Hamlet (Nietzsche) (Yalom, 100) Probably not, the mathematics were not Nietzsche's strong point, but it is a humoring statement.
become who you are... that which does not kill me makes me stronger (Nietzsche) (Yalom, 104)
sooner or later she had to give up the hope for a better past... shaped and toughened by the adversity... she learned how to cope with it and developed ingenious strategies that served her well throughout her life (108) We should all have learned long ago that we do not have a choice to change the past. We DO have a choice to learn from the past and do something about it in the here-and-now.
some refuse the loan of life to avoid the debt of death (108)
our greatest goal should be good health and intellectual wealth, which lead to an inexhaustible supply of ideas, independence, and a moral life (113) Many of the sentiments echoed in this book are hauntingly similar to ideas and personal opinions/philosophies that I had been formulating prior having ever heard of "existential psychology, psychiatry, therapy; or any idea who names like Irvin D. Yalom and Rollo May were.
every living creature wishes to persist in its own being (Spinoza) (Yalom, 128)
the eternal silence of infinite space terrifies me (Pascal) (Yalom, 132)
you can take nothing with you from this world that you have received, you can only take what you have given (Christian proverb) (Yalom, 134)
the truth one discovers for oneself has far greater power than a truth delivered by others (140)
many people are in despair because their dreams didn't come true, and they despair even more that they did not make t hem come true (140)
for of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: "it might have been" (John Greenleaf Whittier) (Yalom, 144). One of my favorite songs "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making" by Straylight Run illustrates this point very well.
taste the sweetness of it all as we as the bitterness (147) ... and the title of the essay referenced earlier... "Only Through the Pain."
the way to value life, the way to feel compassion for others, the way to love anything with greatest depth is to be aware that these experiences are destined to be lost (147) I agree 1,000%
i have continued reading and auditing courses in philosophy an found there more wisdom and guidance in my work than in the professional literature of my field (173) It would appear that there is a way, after several centuries to bring philosophy out of its "ivory tower" and back where it belongs; in the practicing hands of everyday mankind.
Schopenhauer and Bergson, ..., think of human beings as individual manifestations of an all-encompassing life force ... into which a person is reabsorbed after death. Believers in reincarnation would claim that some essence of a human being... will persist and be reborn into another being. Materialists might say that after death, our DNA, our organic molecules, or even our carbon atoms are dispersed into the cosmos until called on to become part of some other life form (181)
conventional therapy... is now no longer relevant (182)
well, what is death? how do you go about dying? no therapist talks about that. if i am meditating upon my breathing and my breathing slows or stops, then what happens to my mind? what about afterward? will there be some form of awareness even after the body, mere trash, is gone? no one can really say. will it be okay to ask my family to allow my body to lie for three days (despite the leakage and odor)? three days, in the Buddhist view, is the time needed for the spirit to clear the body (183)
i felt totally bewildered that the congregation paid homage to a deity so cruel, vain, vengeful, jealous, and thirsty for praise (186) This is an interesting point, but far too large a debate for this post, or even this blog in its entirety.
i respect persons of faith even if i do not share their views (187)
we have no predestined fate, and each of us must decide how to live as fully, happily, and meaningfully as possible (187) In all fairness, we may have a predestined fate, but we will never know what it is. Thus we act either in accordance with the "belief" that we do or that we do not.
if a way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst (Thomas Hardy) (Yalom, 187) Reminiscent of the ultimatum put forth in "The Matrix" by Morphius to Neo. The red pill or the blue pill? Always... always, the blue pill.
the bedrock position of existential therapy posits, then, that in addition to other sources of despair, we suffer also from our inevitable confrontation with the human condition - the givens of existence (201)
each of us must decide how to live as fully, happily, ethically, and meaningfully as possible (202) Or if you're an existential masochist, settle for a life of despair... but who would want that.
death makes me live more in each moment - valuing and appreciating the sheer pleasure of awareness, of being alive (209)
to become wise you must learn to listen to the wild dogs barking in your cellar (Nietzsche) (Yalom, 211)
no matter how brutal, cruel, forbidden, or alien a patient's experience, you can locate yourself some affinity to it if you are willing to enter into your own darkness (216)
here and now interaction... seldom occur in social life. if they do, they are a sign of very great intimacy or of impending conflict (221)
if you are responsible for what has gone wrong in your life, then you, and only you, are able to change it (222) Exactly!
important feelings about adults in early childhood are "transferred", or cast, onto someone else (Freud) (Yalom, 231)
empathy is bidirectional... you must also help patients develop their own empathy for others (241)
what mankind really wants is "magic, mystery and authority" (Dostoevsky) (Yalom, 242)
"do you believe in the afterlife?" "i don't. but i also feel we can never be certain of such things... i'm all for anything that offers you peace of mind, life satisfaction and encourages a virtuous life (248)
my real interest is in this life and in improving it for myself and others (249) This should be applicable regardless if a person is of faith, areligious, secular, or anti-religious
i don't think there is an essential connection - or let me at least say an exclusive connection - between religion, meaning, and morality (259) The connection is certainly not exclusive and is only essential if you are a person of faith. I have, for years now, made it my approach to philosophical arguments not to reference or include any type of faith-based reasoning. If you can make you point with out faith as a fall-back-crutch, imagine all potential uses for that crutch.
ultimately self-deception catches up with ups (276) ..."and all our sins come back to haunt us in the and hang around to tap us on the shoulder and smile silent, its all implied you'll die trying to live this down..." - Straylight Run
anxiety... is the price we pay for self-awareness (276)
gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far had been: namely the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary memoir; also that the moral (and immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant has grown (Nietzsche) (Yalom, 285) Beautifully stated Mr. Nietzsche.
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